Police disrupt human trafficking operation at downtown hotel
Court records show authorities last week disrupted a human trafficking operation in which underage girls were providing sex for money in a downtown Baltimore hotel room.
Detectives with the Maryland Child Exploitation Task Force, looking for young girls that might be working in the Baltimore area, were led to a website where women were soliciting sex, police wrote in charging documents.
At 5 p.m. on Thursday, an undercover officer contacted someone from the site and set up a meeting with two girls and was told to go to the Marriott Hotel in the 100 block of S. Eutaw Street, according to records.
Three hours later, the officer went to the room and exchanged money with a 20-year-old woman and discussed sexual acts with her and a 17-year-old girl, according to records. Officers then closed in on the room and placed them under arrest.
The teenage girl indicated her clothing was in another room, where police located marijuana and found two more women - 35-year-old Sharee Thomas and 23-year-old Shakia Taylor, records show.
The two women from the first room told police that Thomas, who goes by the name "Diamond," had recruited them into prostitution in Rochester, N.Y. and paid for their bus tickets and the hotel room, police said. The women said that they were to pay back Thomas for their expenses and split proceeds from their customers, records show.
Police seized a laptop, flash drives, a digital camera, several cell phones, and ledgers and other paperwork. Thomas faces several human trafficking and prostitution charges and was being held on $25,000 bond. Taylor, of Covington, Ga., was charged with marijuana possession.
